On Friday, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published the first public draft of Encrypted Media Extensions (EME). EME enables content providers to integrate digital rights management (DRM) interfaces into HTML5-based media players. Encrypted Media Extensions is being developed jointly by Google, Microsoft and online streaming-service Netflix. No actual encryption algorithm is part of the draft; that element is designed to be contained in a CDM (Content Decryption Module) that works with EME to decode the content. CDMs may be plugins or built into browsers.

The publication of the new draft is a blow for critics of the extensions, led by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). Under the slogan, "We don't want the Hollyweb", FSF's anti-DRM campaign Defective by Design has started a petition against the "disastrous proposal", though FSF and allied organisations have so far only succeeded in mobilising half of their target of 50,000 supporters.

W3C CEO Jeff Jaffe has given an interview in which he defends the concept of EME. "There is going to be protected content on the Web," said Jaffe. Until now, for DRM in multimedia, content providers have relied on Flash or, like Netflix, on Silverlight. Silverlight will only be available as a browser plugin until 2021. According to Jaffe, the W3C is keen to avoid walled gardens and believes that a little openness and standardisation is better than none. Jaffe has also posted on the W3C blog and is responding to questions regarding the issues there.

Google has already incorporated EME into Chrome and Chrome OS and it can be tried out on this test web page. Netflix is currently working on an HTML5 player in addition to EME  this also depends on Media Source Extensions, which permit delivery via content delivery networks, and the Web Cryptography API, which adds hashing and signatures to HTML content.

DRM being part of the “standard” just opens the door for Hollywood to sue you if you don’t employ the “industry standard” in order to help protect their information on your site / product / app etc.

This is just like when the banks got the law changed so that website owners who got hacked could be charged $50 per account to compensate banks for having to re-issue cards on those accounts. Why shouldn’t they be forced to create a system that can’t be stolen online?

So, all you yapping Libertarians here on FreeRep, how about we just denounce one of the rockbeds of Conservatism altogether - property rights, since so many here believe we no longer have need of them, as that just like the socialists, everything belongs the collective of “the people”.

> So, all you yapping Libertarians here on FreeRep, how about we just denounce one of the rockbeds of Conservatism altogether - property rights, since so many here believe we no longer have need of them, as that just like the socialists, everything belongs the collective of the people.

First, as a content-creating individual musician, I am keenly aware of artistic property rights and creative ownership issues. I don't want people taking my work without my approval, any more than anyone else does who values their own time and effort. But it should be up to me to decide and control that process. I don't want someone else doing it for me, because that way leads to Nanny Statism.

So if the companies who are interested in placing their content on the internet want to protect it with DRM, let them protect it with DRM that THEY pay for, that THEY develop specialized software for, DRM that inconveniences only THEIR paying customers. And let them find out that THEIR customers will go elsewhere. Placing DRM in EVERYONE's way is evil.

If another rockbed of Conservatism -- the free market -- were allowed to choose, DRM would slink off and die a rapid death. It is against every tenet of Conservatism to force DRM down the throats of the players in a free economy. That's what this sort of encroachment is intended to do -- make it impossible to avoid it. And you not only support that action, you belittle those who try to defend against it.

I defend MY right to protect MY content however I please, on my own tab, and any company's right to protect THEIR content how THEY please, on their own tab. I don't expect, and I don't want, to see some standardized "protection" end up everywhere allegedly on my behalf, because it won't be what I would want, and it will do a lot of things I don't want done. Including compromise of the free market.

Yet you think that kind of compromise of Conservative principles is a dandy idea. You DO know you sound just like a Nanny Statist when you talk like that, right? Who's the socialist here? Just sayin... :)

15
posted on 05/13/2013 8:34:43 PM PDT
by dayglored
(Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!)

I’d be curious about open-source issues here. It reads much like they expect all new versions of web browsers to contain these encrypted players. If it’s open source then it can be trivially hacked to write the decrypted stuff to whatever you want. If it’s closed source then browsers themselves, not just Flash player etc., will have to be licensed out... very much against the spirit of the web. If incorporated it’s going to flub, any fool can see this.

16
posted on 05/13/2013 8:51:01 PM PDT
by HiTech RedNeck
(How long before all this "fairness" kills everybody, even the poor it was supposed to help???)

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